Can you be a software craftsman and not test? Scott Nimrod says no! Carl and Richard chat with Scott about his experiences using TDD practices to build software and how that affected his approach to craftsmanship. Scott talks about h.ow writing testing code to quickly test your app code is a far more efficient use of time compared to repeatedly compiling and running an application, then manually navigating to the feature in question and playing with it. Proper tests are faster, more accurate and repeatable, resulting in better code. And they’re even more important when the app gets bigger, the number of developers increase and time passes – build your software right!

If you’re in the database sector from time to time, check out in person events (and virtual events) at http://www.sqlpass.org/. It’s a great learning day and networking opportunity as well 🙂 These types of events seem to, without fail, help increase passion for working with IT tools and realize again why we’re in the field – to help end users and customers have a more feature-rich experience and be more quickly able to make business decisions.

I’m thankful I had the opportunity and great pleasure of attending this event. Was my first conference on the database side. I was very pleased by the variety and quality of sessions on topics of database, BI analytic, and reporting tools.

I had picked a mixture of Tuning, Reporting, and Azure sessions, which was great to learn more in depth about cloud based databases through Microsoft. I was surprised of the settings and tooling power shown inside of the Azure portal. Great stuff to be able to set alerts under certain performance conditions.

Have you gone to tech conferences as well, and how did it compare to your expectations? If you haven’t gone to a conference or meetup yet, I’d highly recommend it.

When working with a remote desktop connection I’ve always loved the shortcut Ctrl+Alt+Pause. I hope others benefit from it as well. At time of writing (with Windows 7 machines), sometimes with multiple monitors the maximize button doesn’t full screen.